Richard Whittall:

The Globalist's Top Ten Books in 2016: The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Middle East Eye: "

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“The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer has helped me immensely with great information and perspective.”

Bob Bradley, former US and Egyptian national coach: "James Dorsey’s The Turbulent World of Middle Eastern Soccer (has) become a reference point for those seeking the latest information as well as looking at the broader picture."

Alon Raab in The International Journal of the History of Sport: “Dorsey’s blog is a goldmine of information.”

Play the Game: "Your expertise is clearly superior when it comes to Middle Eastern soccer."

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David Zirin, Sports Illustrated: "Essential Reading"

Change FIFA: "A fantastic new blog'

Richard Whitall of A More Splendid Life:

"James combines his intimate knowledge of the region with a great passion for soccer"

Christopher Ahl, Play the Game: "An excellent Middle East Football blog"

James Corbett, Inside World Football

Sunday, July 30, 2017

A web of formal and informal Israeli-Arab relations and
common fears of renewed popular uprisings that could threaten regimes and benefit
Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood facilitated Israel’s backing down in
the crisis over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount or Haram al Sharif, home to Islam’s
third most holy shrine, the Al Aqsa mosque.

Protests in recent weeks that forced Israel to lift
restrictions on access and dismantle security arrangements installed on a site
that evokes deep-seated emotions among Muslims and Jews alike had all the
makings of a popular revolt and could yet prove to be a catalyst in approaches
to Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation of lands captured half a
century ago during the 1967 Middle East war. The security equipment was initially
installed after two
Palestinians with Israeli nationality shot dead two Israeli policemen in
the compound.

The spontaneous protests that erupted independent of
established political forces such as the Palestinian Authority (PA) headed by
President Mahmoud Abbas; Hamas, the Islamist faction that controls the Gaza
Strip, and other Palestinian political factions, empowered Palestinian Jerusalemites
who live in a part of the city that has been annexed by Israel but feel that
they are routinely discriminated against. The dismantling of the security
equipment and lifting of restrictions on access constituted a rare instance in
which Israel bowed to Palestinian pressure.

"We Palestinians have proved, not only to Israel, but
to the whole world, that we Palestinians have promising potential that can
never be broken," said Palestinian
activist Ali Jiddah.

“We are on the threshold of a big shift. What is going on
today is not random or transient. It could be the beginning of a third intifada
that is different from the others. What is unique about this is that it’s not
individual actions, but a popular movement capable of attracting huge numbers
of people. This popular momentum could recharge the Palestinian people. It may
take time but we are on the way. It will override the PA. They don't even know
it exists. This will bring about a change in leadership,” added former
Palestinian information minister-turned activist Mustafa Barghouti.

The sense of empowerment was evident two days after the
Israeli backdown when protests
erupted in the Jaffa section of Tel Aviv after police shot dead a
Palestinian during a shootout with suspected criminals. 'The policemen have no
right to shoot at people. This time we will not keep quiet,' said a Jaffa resident.

The notion of an empowered and angry public raised not only
the spectre of a possible Palestinian uprising, the third in three decades, but
a potential return of street protests elsewhere in the Middle East like those
that in 2011 toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen.

The Jerusalem protests erupted at a moment that Saudi Arabia
and the UAE have gone to extremes to roll back the 2011 achievements and ensure
that the Middle East and North Africa does not witness a repeat. Saudi
King Salman, the custodian of Islam’s two most holy cities, Mecca and
Medina, in a statement by his royal court, claimed credit for resolving the Al
Aqsa crisis through his contacts with world leaders.

The Jerusalem protests came on the back of
widespread anti-government demonstrations in northern Morocco that have
mushroomed since May and more recently expressed an anti-monarchy sentiment.
The Moroccan protests, much like the 2011 revolt in Tunisia that forced
President out of office, were sparked by the death of a fish vendor in the
Riffian city of al Hoceima, who was killed by
a trash compactor as he attempted to recover fish confiscated by authorities.

Two incidents, the sentencing of a scion of a key Jordanian
tribe to life in prison for killing three Americans at a Jordanian air base and
the extradition to Israel of an Israeli security officer who killed two
Jordanians to fend off an attack, threaten to take Jordan to the brink. Outrage
over the government’s handling of the incidents have called into question a
social contract in which Jordanians in the wake of protests in 2011 dropped
demands for political reform and accepted austerity in exchange for stability.

“This has become an issue of dignity. There is a complete
lack of trust and resentment toward this government by the people. We are
afraid of where we go from this point,” said Jordanian member
of parliament Saddah Habashneh.

Much more than the Moroccan protests and Jordanian anger,
resistance to Israeli actions surrounding the Al Aqsa Mosque had the potential
of forcing the hand of Arab autocrats in a post-2011 era in which Arabic public
opinion has begun to count. Deep-seated divisions in the Arab world coupled
with draconian anti-protest laws may explain the absence of demonstrations in
the Middle East and North Africa in support of the Palestinians.

Nonetheless, if Palestinians were to capitalize on their Al
Aqsa success to confront Israeli occupation and discrimination, it could spark
public dissent elsewhere in the region as well as the wider Muslim world that
could turn against local leaders. Continued Palestinian protests, moreover, could
complicate cooperation between Israel and conservative Arab states in countering
Iranian influence in the Middle East as well as an attempt to return
to Palestine a UAE-backed Palestinian leader, who has good relations with
key figures in the United States and Israel.

Arab rulers have so far been helped not only by the absence
of solidarity protests in Arab capitals, but also by indications that Arab
public opinion may be divided because of the Gulf crisis over attitudes towards
the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, both of which have close ties to Qatar. In
one instance, a caller
told the London-based Arabic-language Al-Hiwar television network: “I’m
opposed to an Al-Aqsa victory, because an Al-Aqsa victory is a victory for
Hamas and Qatar!”

Ahmed
Samah al-Idarusi, a spokesman for the Popular Committee for the Defense of
Sinai, a group formed by the Egyptian region’s tribal leaders, complained that “we
now encounter Egyptian diplomatic and cultural silence such that even the
elites are not capable of releasing a single joint statement of condemnation” of
Israeli actions in the Al Aqsa compound.

Prominent
Israeli commentator Zvi Bar’el noted that so far, the Al Aqsa protests have
not sparked a third Palestinian intifada even though they had all the makings
of an uprising. Mr. Bar’el argued that Palestinians were still traumatized by
the political and human cost of the second intifada in the first years of the
21st century that ironically was dubbed the Al Aqsa intifada.

“The tragic results of the second intifada – from both the
humanitarian and strategic perspectives – have been deeply engraved in the
collective Palestinian memory. It’s hard to imagine what the expiry date of
such trauma is… Perhaps…the trauma is still effective – but it’s best not to
put it to the test,” Mr. Bar’el said.

Saturday, July 29, 2017

Lurking below the surface of the Gulf crisis, are rival, yet
troubled, attempts by Qatar and its detractors to use sports to boost soft
power and/or launder tarnished images of their autocracies.

Ironically, the crisis threatens to have levelled the
playing field in a bitter media and public diplomacy war that was covert prior
to the seven-week-old Saudi-UAE-Bahraini-led diplomatic and economic boycott of
Qatar. If anything, the Gulf crisis has emerged as a case study of the pitfalls
of reputation management in which sports is an important tool. On balance, it
so far has had different effects on the reputations of three of the key
protagonists.

It has also served to highlight the pot-blames-the-kettle-character
of the Gulf crisis, most recently with the disclosure that North
Koreans were employed not only in Qatar on World Cup-related projects, but
also on a UAE military base that hosts US forces. The disclosure of relations
with North Korea is awkward at a time of increased tension between North
Korea and the United States over the pariah state’s ballistic missile and nuclear
program.

A Washington-based Saudi dissident group, the Institute for
Gulf Affairs, recently published a memo reportedly from the State Department as
well as emails from the hacked account of Yousef al-Otaiba, the high-profile
UAE ambassador to the United States, that asserted that a UAE company, Al-Mutlaq
Technologies, had bought $100 million worth of weapons from North Korea for
use in the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen.

Qatar, plagued by allegations that its successful bid for
the 2022 World Cup hosting rights lacked integrity and that its migrant labour
regime amounted to slavery, has scored reputational gains in the Gulf crisis
despite the recent revelations related to North Korea. While the revelations
reinforced concerns about Qatar’s policies and labour regime, they also
suggested that issues at stake in the Gulf crisis constituted regional problems
rather than exclusive concern about just one of the Gulf states.

The UAE, a driving force in the anti-Qatar campaign that
uses the hosting of international sporting events to boost its image, has
suffered because of its failure and that of its alliance partners to garner
widespread international support for its tactics and demands that were
perceived as unreasonable, unactionable, and designed to undermine Qatari
sovereignty and independence. The UAE’s North Korea link as well as allegations
by human rights groups, denied by the
government in Abu Dhabi, that the UAE was backing the
abuse of prisoners in Yemen has done little to enhance the Gulf state’s
reputation.

Qatar and the UAE’s North Korean links could put the two
Gulf states in the Trump administration’s firing line as it considers how to
respond the Pyongyang’s most recent ballistic missile test that the pariah
state claims would allow it to target
any US city. Pressuring countries to back away from economic relations with
North Korea, the Trump administration recently extended
sanctioning of Sudan for among other things not being fully committed to
implementing United Nations sanctions on the country.

Saudi Arabia promised Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir,
during a visit earlier this month to the kingdom as well as the UAE, that it would continue to see
improvement of relations between Sudan and the United States despite the
African country’s refusal to join the Saudi-UAE-led boycott of Qatar.

Neither the Gulf crisis nor sports has done much for
Bahrain, its image tarnished by its brutal suppression in 2011 of a popular
revolt with the help of Saudi and UAE forces, and its subsequent repression of
opposition forces and continuous violations of basic human rights. Worse even,
the Gulf crisis has focussed attention on Bahrain’s
failed effort to use sports to polish its tarnished image and put it in the
spotlight as an example of the degree to which smaller Gulf states risk losing
their ability to chart an independent course.

As the quarrelling Gulf states pour millions of dollars into
hiring public relations and lobbying firms in Washington and elsewhere with the
UAE as the largest spender, Qatar can shrug off in both reputational and
financial terms a $51,000
fine by world soccer body FIFA. Qatar was fined because its national team
wore jerseys in a World Cup qualifier against South Korea that featured a
drawing of Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. The drawing has come to
symbolize a wave of Qatari nationalism sparked by the Gulf crisis.

The media war potentially could enter a new phase with the acquisition
by a relatively unknown Saudi businessman, Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel, of an up
to 50 percent stake in Independent Digital News and Media, the holding
company that publishes Britain’s left-wing The Independent daily. The
Independent has consistently been critical of the kingdom. Evgeny Lebedev, the Russian
owner of the Independent’s parent company, ESI Media, recently saw his
shareholding fall below 50 percent.

At the bottom line, the escalating media and public
diplomacy war between Qatar and its Gulf detractors is as likely, as is evident
with the revelations about North Korea, to put on public display the
protagonists’ hidden skeletons, as it is likely to contribute to attempts to
polish tarnished reputations and influence attitudes and policies in Western
capitals.

A key tool in the protagonists’ quivers, sports is proving
to be a double-edged sword as it too has the potential of shining the light on
practices and policies Gulf states would prefer to keep out of the public
domain.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Buried in the Gulf crisis is a major development likely to
reshape international relations as well as power dynamics in the Middle East:
the coming out of small states capable of punching far above their weight with
Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, a driver of the crisis, locked into an epic
struggle to rewrite the region’s political map.

Goals dictate strategy

Underwriting the struggle are different strategies of the
Gulf’s small states, buffeted by huge war chests garnered from energy exports,
to project power and shape the world around them. Both Qatar and the UAE
project themselves as regional and global hubs that are building cutting-edge,
21st century knowledge societies on top of tribally-based
autocracies. Despite their different attitudes towards political Islam, Qatar
and the UAE have both developed societies in which religious scholars have
relatively little say and Islamic mores and norms are relatively liberally
interpreted.

That, however, may be where the communality in approach
ends. At the core of the different strategies as well as the diplomatic and
economic boycott imposed in June 2017 on Qatar by a Saudi-UAE-led alliance, lie
opposed visions of the future of a region wracked by debilitating power
struggles; a convoluted, bloody and painful quest for political change; and a
determined and ruthless counterrevolutionary effort to salvage the fundaments
of the status quo ante.

The UAE views autocracy as the key to regional security and
the survival of its autocratic regime. It is seeking to “impose a narrative of
authoritarian stability onto the Middle East,” said security studies scholar
Andreas Krieg.[i]

As a result, the UAE has backed regime change in a number of
countries, including Egypt[ii]
and reportedly Turkey;[iii]
supported anti-Islamist, anti- government rebels in Libya; joined Saudi
Arabia’s ill-fated military intervention in Yemen; and in the latest episode of
its campaign, driven imposition of the boycott of Qatar. The UAE was also a
driving force in persuading Saudi Arabia in 2014 to follow its example and ban
the Muslim Brotherhood. It has attempted with relatively little success to
create a more acquiescent, apolitical, alternative Muslim grouping.[iv]

In contrast to the UAE, Qatar has sought to position itself
as the regional go-to go-between and mediator by maintaining relations not only
with states but also a scala of Islamist, militant and rebel groups across the
Middle East and northern Africa. It moreover embraced the 2011 popular Arab
revolts that toppled the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and
supported Islamist forces, with the Brotherhood in the lead that emerged as the
most organized political force from the uprisings.[v]
Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, despite their differing interpretations of
Islam and contradictory political outlooks, amounted to aligning itself with
forces who were challenging Gulf regimes and that the UAE alongside Saudi
Arabia was seeking to suppress.

The UAE and Qatar’s starkly different visions and the
determination of both small states to shape the Middle East and North Africa in
their mould as a matter of a security and defence policy designed to ensure
regime survival made confrontation inevitable. It is an epic struggle in which
Qatar and the UAE, governed by rulers who have a visceral dislike of one
another, could in the short and middle term both emerge as winners even if it
is at the expense of those on whose backs the battle is fought and with
considerable damage to their carefully groomed reputations.

The UAE and Qatar’s duelling visions complicate the region’s
lay of the land wracked by multiple rivalries in which the interests of
regional and external protagonists at times coincide but more often than not
exacerbate the crisis. That has been nowhere more evident than in Syria where
the Gulf’s major players supported Syrian rebels fighting the regime of
President Bashar al-Assad, yet aggravated the struggle by at times aiding rival
groups.

Joe Biden, a man known not to mince his words, complained as
Barak Obama’s vice president that “our allies in the region were our largest
problem in Syria. The Turks were great friends… The Saudis, the Emiratis, etc.
What were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and
essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war. What did they do? They poured hundreds
and millions of dollars and tens and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone
who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied
were Al-Nusra and Al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from
other parts of the world… We could not convince our colleagues to stop
supplying them.”[vi]
Biden was referring to Jabhat al-Nusra, initially an Al Qaeda affiliate that
later distanced itself from the group.

Similarly, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
complained in cable made public by Wikileaks that “UAE-based donors have
provided financial support to a variety of terrorist groups, including
Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups, including Hamas.”
Clinton warned “that the UAE’s role as a growing global financial centre,
coupled with weak regulatory oversight, makes it vulnerable to abuse by
terrorist financiers and facilitation networks.”[vii]
To be fair, the cable named and shamed virtually all Gulf states except for Oman.

At the bottom line, the rival strategies that involve the
UAE working the corridors of power of the Gulf’s behemoth, Saudi Arabia, whose
focus is its existential fight with Iran, and Qatar sponsoring opposition
forces, has left the Middle East and North Africa in shambles. Beyond Syria,
Libya and Yemen are wracked by wars. Egypt is ruled by an autocrat more brutal
than his autocratic predecessor who has made his country financially dependent
on Saudi Arabia and the UAE and has been unable to fulfil promises of greater
economic opportunity.

Offense is the best defense

Qatar’s vision of a future Middle East and the survival of
its ruling family is rooted in the creation in 1971 of a state, the only
country alongside Saudi Arabia that adheres to Wahhabism, an austere
interpretation of Islam, that was
intended to be everything that the kingdom is not.[viii]
Despite being a traditional Gulf state, Qatari conservatism is everything but a
mirror image of Saudi Arabia’s stark way of life with its powerful,
conservative clergy, absolute gender segregation; total ban on alcohol and
houses of worship for adherents of other religions, and refusal to accommodate
alternative lifestyles or religious practices.

Qataris privately distinguish between their “Wahhabism of
the sea” as opposed to Saudi Arabia’s “Wahhabism of the land,” a reference to
the fact that the Saudi government has less control of an empowered clergy
compared to Qatar that has no indigenous clergy with a social base to speak of;
a Saudi history of tribal strife over oases as opposed to one of communal life
in Qatar, and Qatar’s outward looking maritime trade history. Some Qataris also
attribute their country’s more outward looking perspective as well as its
willingness to accommodate political exiles and opposition forces to a
tradition of being an oasis of refuge dating back to the 19th
century when the desolate territory offered sanctuary to pirates, fugitives and
people fleeing persecution elsewhere in the Arabian Peninsula. Qatar’s founder,
Jassim bin Mohammed AL Thani, is quoted by Qataris as having described their
country as the ‘ka’aba of the dispossessed,’ a reference to the black cubicle
in Mecca that is a focal point of the pilgrimage to the holy city.[ix]

The notion of a more outward looking form of Wahhabism while
rooted in history is in some ways a modern-day fallacy. Iranians and Africans
accounted for the bulk of foreigners in Qatar in the 1930s who constituted 39
percent of the Qatari population and with whom Qataris had contact with for
centuries. Originally slaves, many of the Africans were absorbed by the tribes
as honorary members, became Qatari citizens with evidence and were not as a
cultural threat. The discovery of oil and the rise of the rentier state changed
all of that.[x]
Qataris have largely been insensitive to regular reports of abuse of Asian
domestic workers, but protested in 2009 when reports emerged that Qataris were
hiring Saudis as maids. The protest was grounded in fears that if Saudis, their
closest kin in the Gulf, could be reduced to that status of a maid, so could
Qataris, pampered by a cradle-to-grave state.[xi]

The absence of religious scholars was in part a reflection
of Qatari ambivalence towards Wahhabism that it viewed as both an opportunity
and a threat: on the one hand, it served as a tool to legitimise domestic rule,
on the other it was a potential monkey wrench Saudi Arabia could employ to
assert control. Opting to generate a clerical class of its own would have
enhanced the threat because Qatar would have been dependent on Saudi clergymen
to develop its own. That would have produced a clergy steeped in the kingdom’s
austere theology and inspired by its history of political power-sharing that
would have advocated a Saudi-style, state-defined form of political Islam. By
steering clear of the grooming of an indigenous clergy of their own, Qatari
leaders ensured that they had greater manoeuvrability. They did not have to
give a clergy a say in political and social affairs. Qatar’s pragmatic
relationship to Wahhabism eased the forging of a close relationship with the
Brotherhood even before it achieved independence.[xii]

Al-Sattar, the personal emissary to Palestine of
Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna was appointed in the early 1960s director
of Islamic Sciences at the ministry of education and co-authored numerous
textbooks for the nascent Qatari school system that allowed for an approach
that was not exclusively informed by Saudi interpretations of Wahhabism.[xiii]
Qaradawi and Al-Sallabi were among 59 people listed by the Saudi-UAE-led
alliance as Qatar-supported terrorists at the outset of the Gulf crisis.[xiv]

Qaradawi, who has been resident in Doha since he was forced
into exile in 1961 by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s crackdown on the
Brotherhood, has emerged as one of the Muslim world’s most influential
religious scholars. He is believed to have opted for Qatar as his new home
rather than Saudi Arabia that accommodated the largest number of fleeing
Brothers in consultation with the Brotherhood’s leadership.[xv]

Freshly out of prison, Qaradawi’s move to Qatar was likely
facilitated by Abdul-Badi Saqr, an Egyptian who came in 1954 at the invitation
of the Qataris as one of the first of the Brothers to help set up their
education system. Saqr had been recommended by Muhib
al-Din al-Khatib, the proprietor of a Salafi bookshop in Cairo.[xvi]To fill the need for teachers, he invited Brothers who according to
scholar Abdullah Juma Kobaisi “stamped the education system with their Islamic
ideology since the education department was under their control.”[xvii]

The role of the Brotherhood was further enhanced by the fact
that Qatar limited the institutional opportunities available for religious
scholars of any description to exert influence domestically.

Religious schools as first founded by
Qaradawi in 1961 remained niche and in 2008 to 2009 only taught 257 students,
the vast majority of whom were not Qatari. Taking a leaf out of the books of
Kemalist Turkey and the late president Habib Bourgiba’s Tunisia, two secular
states that sought to ensure that Islam was perceived as a personal rather than
a public practice, Qatar University’s College of Sharia and Islamic Studies,
the country’s sole provider of higher religious education, unlike multiple
similar institutions in Saud Arabia, enjoyed no special status even though
Qaradawi was its first dean.[xviii]

Instead, with Qaradawi, Qatar created a global mufti[xix]
who in the words of Islam scholar Yahya Michot represented the three dimensions
of a spiritual leader that many in the global community of faithful were
looking for: independence as a Muslim scholar and activist, representation of a
transnational movement such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and association with an
international organization such as the Qatar-backed International Union of
Muslim Scholars (IUMS) that Qaradawi chairs.[xx]

Qaradawi offered the Al Thanis, who hail from the Bani
Tamim, the tribal group that brought forth Wahhabism’s founder, Muhammad bin
Abd al-Wahhab, a powerful shield against religious criticism. Moreover, he and
other Brothers, helped Qatar develop its own fusion of Salafist and Brotherhood
thinking that was initially expressed in publications such as Majalat al Umma.[xxi]
They counterbalanced the influence of local Saudi-influenced scholars and
Salafis who were influential in the ministries of justice and religious
endowments.

The dismantling of the Brotherhood’s Qatari branch in the
1990s, a reformist voice within the group, assured the Gulf state that it would
be spared the emergence of a home-grown Islamist movement.

Diverting the
Islamist focus away from Qatar was further facilitated by Qatar’s funding of
Brotherhood media outlets, including a show for Qaradawi on Al Jazeera,
Islamweb.net and Islamonline.com. Qaradawi’s show, Al Sharia wal Hayat (The
Shariah and Life) that reached a global audience of tens of millions of Arabic
speakers, helped give Al Jazeera its Islamist stamp. It also was a fixture on
Qatar state television which broadcasted his Friday prayer sermons live.

The Qatari media strategy offered the Gulf state influence
across the Middle East and North Africa where Brotherhood off-shoots were
active including Gaza with Hamas, which Qatar lured away from Syria and Iran,
as well as the Islamic Action Front in Jordan. The setting up of Al Jazeera
paralleled the structuring of the Gulf state’s ties to the Brotherhood. While
Al Jazeera steers clear of critical coverage of Qatar, the Brotherhood was
allowed to operate everywhere except for in Qatar itself.

Instead, Qatar funded institutions that were designed to
foster a generation of activists in the Middle East and North Africa as well as
to guide the Brotherhood in its transition from a clandestine to a public
group. Former Qatari Brother Jassim Al-Sultan established the Al-Nahda
(Awakening) Project[xxii]
to promote Islamist activism within democracies.

A medical doctor, Al-Sultan has since the dissolution of the
group in Qatar advised the Brotherhood to reach out to other groups rather than
stick to its strategy of building power bases within existing institutions. He
has also criticized the Brotherhood for insisting on its slogan, ‘Islam is the
Solution.’ Instead, he urged Egyptian Islamists to drop their notion of "infiltrating
the society to control it" in favour of what he termed "partnership
thought."[xxiii]

Al Nahda cooperated closely with the London and Doha-based
Academy of Change (AOC)[xxiv]
that focused on the study of “social, cultural, and political transformations
especially in the Arabic and Islamic region.” AOC, headed by Hisham Morsi, an
Egyptian-British paediatrician and British national married to one of
Qaradawi’s daughters,[xxv]
appeared to be modelled on Otoper, the Serbian youth movement that toppled
President Slobodan Milosevic and has since transformed itself into a training
ground for non-violent protest. Arrested during the 20ll popular revolt that
toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and later released, Morsi has authored
manual on the tactics of non-violent resistance. In 2005, AOC organized its
first three-day seminar in Cairo on civil disobedience tactics, including
operating through decentralized networks and ensuring adherence to non-violence
even if law enforcement intervenes brutally.[xxvi]

Former Qatari justice minister and prominent lawyer Najeeb
al Nauimi encapsuled the strategic relationship between Qatar and the
Brotherhood as well as the Gulf state’s more liberal interpretation of
Wahhabism by noting that "Saudi Arabia has Mecca and Medina. We have
Qaradawi -- and all his daughters drive cars and work.”[xxvii]

With the eruption of the protests in various Arab countries
in 2011, Qaradawi was instrumental in persuading Qatar to use its political and
financial muscle to support the Brotherhood in Egypt; the revolt in Libya
against Col. Moammar Qaddafi; the post-Ben Ali Ennahdha-led government in
Tunisia; an assortment of Islamist groups in Yemen and Morocco, and opponents
of Syrian president Assad. Three days after a triumphant appearance in Cairo’s
Tahrir Square in early 2011, Qaradawi issued on Al Jazeera a fatwa or religious
opinion authorizing the killing of Qaddafi.[xxviii]
He asserted further that historic links
between Egypt and Syria put Syria in protesters’ firing line.[xxix]
In response, Syrian officials accused Qaradawi of fostering sectarianism.[xxx]

Plausible deniability

If Qatar’s strategy was confrontational, the UAE opted for
an approach that granted it a measure of plausible deniability by influencing
the policies of Big Brother Saudi Arabia, establishing close ties to key policy
makers in Washington, acquiring ports straddling the world’s busiest shipping
lanes, and crafting a reputation as Little Sparta,[xxxi]
a military power that despite its size and with the help of mercenaries[xxxii]
could stand its ground and like the big boys on the block establish foreign
military bases.

For much of the last decade, the UAE has argued against the
notion of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that groups Saudi
Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain as a defense pact.
Instead, the UAE advertised itself as the United States’ most partner in the
region. "I am not a believer in grouping the GCC together...ask us who
wants to be involved and we will step forward, the others will take a step
back... Encourage those of us who wish to lead to lead and we will; sooner or
later the others will step forward but only when it is necessary," UAE
Crown Prince and strongman Mohammed bin Zayed told US officials in 2009.[xxxiii]

While Qatar’s ever closer military ties to the United States
centred on the Al Udeid Air Base, the largest US base in the Middle East that
is home to the forward command post of the US Central Command, the UAE deepened
relations in part by participating in every US war in the region since 1991
except for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[xxxiv]
Those wars included the 2001 US assault on Afghanistan despite the fact that
the UAE, surprisingly unlike Qatar, was only one of three countries alongside
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to have recognized the Taliban regime.[xxxv]

The fundamental differences in UAE and Qatari strategy also
expressed themselves in their different approaches towards hard and soft power.
Qatar focussed primarily on the soft power aspect with a fast-paced,
mediation-driven foreign policy; a world class airline; high profile
investments in arts, real estate and blue chips; and sports with an eye on
becoming a global hub and centre of excellence in multiple fields.

Qatar arms acquisitions were modest compared to those of
Saudi Arabia and the UAE until 2014[xxxvi]
when it went on a $24 billion buying spree days after Saudi Arabia, the UAE and
Bahrain first withdrew their ambassadors from Doha,[xxxvii]
and its subsequent $12 billion acquisition of US fighter planes in 2017 days
after the current Gulf crisis erupted.[xxxviii]
The US embassy in Doha reported prior to the 2014 rupture in relations that Qatar
lacked a national military strategy and seemed reluctant to draw one up.[xxxix]
The embassy concluded in a cable to the State Department that “the QAF (Qatar
Air Force) could put up little defense against Qatar’s primary perceived
threats – Saudi Arabia and Iran – and the U.S. military’s presence here is
larger and far more capable than Qatar’s forces.”[xl]

Qatar’s inclination to rely more on soft rather than hard
power and its positioning as a friend-to-all and mediator is rooted in a
tradition of playing both sides against the middle that dates back to the 19th
century. Qatari tribes were juggling Ottomans, Brits, Omanis, Saudis and
Iranians who were competing for influence on the tribes’ peninsula. They have
seen their empires rise and fall.

Extrapolating from that experience,
modern-day Qatar sees intellectual creativity and debate as long as it does not
involve discussion of the Gulf state itself as a soft power tool. The
controversial Al Jazeera television network, the in-gathering of the exiles,
and the support of opposition groups are vehicles that position Qatar at the
centre of a world of ideas that is likely to shape the future of the Middle
East and North Africa.

The UAE adopted some of the same soft power elements, such
as world class airlines and museums, blue chip investments, and sports but in
contrast to Qatar saw its stepped-up military engagement and projection of
strength as both a hard and soft power ploy. While Qatar primarily used its
financial muscle, political support for multiple groups, and Al Jazeera to
manipulate developments in the region, the UAE flexed not only its financial
and commercial muscles, but also its improved military capability to intervene
in multiple regional crises to a far greater extent than Qatar did.

By positioning itself as a power behind the Saudi throne,
the UAE successfully exploited margins in the corridors of power in Riyadh to
get the kingdom to adopt policies like the banning of the Brotherhood, a group
that has the effect of a red cloth on a bull on Bin Zayed, but that the Saudis
may not have pursued otherwise. The UAE, moreover, by aligning itself with
Saudi Arabia rather than antagonizing it, has been far defter in its ability to
achieve its goals and project its power without flying too high above the
radar.

The UAE’s approach has also allowed it to ensure that major
policy differences with Saudi Arabia on issues such as the conduct and
objectives of the Yemen war, a role for the Brotherhood in a Sunni Muslim
alliance against Iran, the degree of economic integration within the GCC and
the thwarting of Saudi-led efforts to introduce a common currency, and Hamas’
place in Palestinian politics, did not get out of hand. Even more importantly,
the approach ensured that the UAE’s policies were adopted or endorsed by bigger
powers.

In fact, Bin Zayed’s finger prints were all over the
Saudi-UAE-led alliance’s demands that Qatar halt its supports for Islamists and
militants, shutter Al Jazeera and other media outlets, and close a Turkish
military base.[xli] In
2009, Sheikh Mohamed went as far as telling US officials that Qatar is
"part of the Muslim Brotherhood."[xlii]
He suggested that a review of Al Jazeera employees would show that 90 percent
were affiliated with the Brotherhood.

Because of the Brotherhood’s inroads into the UAE, Bin Zayed
said he had sent his son with the Red Cross rather than the Red Crescent on a
humanitarian mission to Ethiopia to cure him of his interest in Islamist
teachings. “His son returned from the mission with his vision of the west
intact and in fact corrected. He was
astonished that the Christians with the Red Cross were giving food and support
to anyone who needed the support, not just to Christians. His son had only heard the stories of the
west through the lens of Al Jazeera and others similarly aligned,” the US embassy
in Abu Dhabi recounted Bin Zayed as saying.[xliii]

Distrust of the Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia dates back to
post-9/11 Brotherhood-backed calls for reform in the kingdom and its support
for Saddam Hussein after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 that culminated in then
Interior Minister Prince Nayef declaring that the group was at the root of all
of the kingdom’s problems.[xliv]
Two years later, Bin Zayed took advantage of the fact that ailing King Abdullah
had an approximately two-hour concentration span to convince him with the help
of the head of the Saudi court, Khaled al Tuwaijri, to designate the
Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.[xlv]

It was a decision that was at stake in the power struggle
that occurred as Abdullah lay on his death bed. Bin Zayed initially lost with
the dismissal of Al-Tuwaijri and other Saudi officials close to the UAE crown
prince by newly appointed King Salman.[xlvi]
Within weeks of his rise in 2015, Salman, eager to form a Sunni Muslim alliance
against Iran, made overtures to the Brotherhood. In a first public gesture, two
weeks after Salman’s inauguration, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Feisal told
an interviewer that “there is no problem between the kingdom and the movement.”[xlvii]
The Muslim World League, a body established by Saudi Arabia in the 1960s and
dominated by the Brotherhood, organized a month later a conference in a
building Mecca that had not been used since the banning of the brothers to
which Qataris with close ties to the Islamists were invited.[xlviii]

Not to be defeated and determined to stiffen the Saudis back
when it came to the Brotherhood, Bin Zayed forged close ties to his namesake,
Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the king’s son who was being groomed to become
Salman’s successor. Bin Zayed became young Salman’s model for the kind of
authority he wanted to project.

“A close working relationship has developed between the two
men, who share a ‘can-do’ mentality that favours ambitious ‘big-picture’
approaches to national and regional issues… Most significantly, for Qatar, Bin
Zayed has secured Saudi backing for his hard-line approach to the Muslim
Brotherhood and other regional Islamist groups… Although King Salman
pragmatically engaged with members of the Brotherhood after he came to power in
January 2015, the Saudi stance has once again moved closer to the Emirati one in
recent months,” said Gulf scholar Kristian Coates Ulrichsen.[xlix]

Obsessed

If change in the Middle East and North Africa is ultimately
inevitable, the UAE is no less vulnerable than Qatar. While the rulers of the
seven emirates that constitute the UAE under the leadership of Abu Dhabi’s
Al-Nahayan family may well agree on the threat posed by the Brotherhood, it
remains unclear whether they are equally enthusiastic about Bin Zayed’s
aggressive policies towards Qatar.

The Gulf crisis “is about Abu Dhabi asserting its dominance
in foreign policy issues, because this is not in Dubai’s interest,” said former
British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Sir
William Patey. By implication, Sir Patey was suggesting that unease among
the various emirates may be one reason why Abu Dhabi refrained from tightening
the screws on Qatar by closing a partially Abu Dhabi-owned pipeline from Qatar
that supplies Dubai with up to 40 percent of its natural gas needs.

Bin Zayed’s obsession with Qatar and the Brotherhood is
rooted in the fact that the Brotherhood-affiliated Jamiat Al-Islah party,
founded in the Emirates in 1974 by Emiratis who had met Brothers while studying
in Egypt and Kuwait, was created after a decade in which Brothers operating
from Qatar had agitated n the UAE.[l]
Paving the way for the establishment of the party, Abdel Badie Sakkar, an early
Muslim Brotherhood migrant to Qatar, travelled regularly to the Emirates where
he established Al-Iman school in Dubai’s Rashidiya neighbourhood of Dubai that
was staffed by Al-Sattar’s relatives and associates.[li]

Bin Zayed’s obsession with the Brotherhood, believed to have
been fed by fierce opponents of the group like former Egyptian State Security
chief, retired General Fuad Allam, a lecturer at Cairo’s Police Academy and the
National Center for Criminal and Social Research and Riyadh’s Naif Arab
University for Security Sciences, put an end to UAE founder Sheikh Zayed
al-Nahyan’s willingness to indulge the group.

Bin Zayed’s concern was further fuelled by a declaration in
1994 by the International Organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood stating that
“we believe in the existence of multiple political parties in Islamic society.
Authorities should not inhibit the formation of political parties and groups as
long as the Shari‘a is the supreme constitution … The recognition of multiple
political parties entails the consent to a peaceful transfer of power between
political groups and parties by means of periodic elections.”[lii]

The US embassy in Abu Dhabi reported in 2004 that “in a
meeting with (US) Deputy Secretary (of State Richard) Armitage on April 20,
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed noted that UAE security forces had identified ‘50 to
60’ Emirati Muslim Brothers in the Armed Forces, and that a senior Muslim
Brotherhood sympathizer is within one of the ruling families - a reference, we
believe, to Sharjah Ruler Sheikh Sultan Al Qassimi… whose ties to Saudi Arabia
are well known.”[liii]

At its peak, Al-Islah enjoyed significant
support among Emiratis as well as within the country’s armed forces.[liv]
Al-Islah’s size and influence was ultimately limited by restrictions on
political activity that forced the group to focus on social, cultural and
educational activities. Al-Islah campaigned against Westernization and sought
to imbue younger Emiratis with Islamic mores.

The restrictions were part of a collapsed deal negotiated in
the late 1990s under which the party would have been allowed to remain active
in exchange for ending its allegiance to the Brotherhood’s global leadership, a
halt to its recruitment in the UAE’s armed forces and end to political
activities.[lv]
Bin Zayed estimated that in 2004 Al-Islah had a some 700 members.[lvi]
Scores of Al-Islah members were put on trial in 2012 on charges of plotting to
undermine the government in through recruitment in the military and the
bureaucracy.[lvii]

Bin Zayed’s obsession despite the Brotherhood’s small
numbers in the UAE itself has prompted the government to spend tens of billions
of dollars on fighting the group. “By doing so, the UAE isn’t fighting a real
threat, rather it is trying to suppress a popular trend,” said analyst Galip
Dalay.[lviii]

Dalay’s assertion was countered by a Muslim Brother serving
a 15-year jail sentence in the UAE who was trotted out for an interview with
Abu Dhabi Television in which he asserted that Qatar had trained Brothers to
use social media to mobilize protests. “Qatar believes that it is only a matter
of time before it
would bring people into the streets (of the UAE) as it did in other countries,”
said Abdulrahman bin Subaih Khalifa Al Suwaidi, a former Al-Islah board member.[lix]

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile